Ride the Storm (Cassandra Palmer 8)

“But she was . . . she was some kind of evil sorceress! Or did the legends get that wrong, too?”

“No, they were pretty spot-on there.”

“But you . . . but she . . . and Pritkin—”

“Considering who your mother is, I don’t think throwing stones—”

“Morgana?”

“Stop saying it like that. It made sense at the time.”

“How? How on earth does marrying an evil fey sorceress—”

“Quarter fey. And we never actually got around to marriage—”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“She was lovely, like her mother,” he said, ignoring me. “Only less cold, less distant. At least with everyone else. She didn’t seem too fond of me—”

“Imagine!”

“Which was a problem, since I was not Uther, and do not rape—”

“Of course not.”

“If I did, why spend all that time getting to know her?” he demanded. “Why teach her magic?”

“You taught her?”

“Who else? Genetics is an odd thing, and she’d ended up quite a bit more powerful than her mother. Naturally, it made her curious about her other relations—and their magic—but Igraine would never allow her to be taught. Afraid her daughter would run off to Faerie if she had the skill, and she wanted her on earth.”

“But Morgaine had other ideas.”

He nodded. “It was how I won her over in the end. I agreed to teach her magic as a seduction technique. It worked . . . in a manner of speaking.”

“What manner? It either works or it doesn’t.”

“Ah, to be young. No. It either works or she imprisons you in a tree using one of your own spells, then goes off to explore Faerie. Fortunately, by that time she was already pregnant with Emrys and, once she realized this, she returned to give birth on earth and give the child to me.”

“And you put him with a couple of guardians who thought he was some kind of freak!”

“Who told you— Oh, never mind.” Rosier scowled. “Well, what did you expect me to do? I couldn’t take him back with me, now, could I? What if he hadn’t received my power? How would he have fit in on earth after growing up in the demon realms? Not that he would have grown up there. That damn court—they attacked him when I finally brought him back with me, did you know? Almost killed him, and that was after he was an adult and able to defend himself. Can you imagine what they would have done to a child?”

“So you left him on earth.”

“It seemed the best way. I put him with a farmer’s family for a while, then arranged for him to go off with Taliesin when he was older to get a bit of experience. The bard, part fey, little teched.” Rosier tapped the side of his head. “But a good sort overall. Roamed about all over the place. Thought it would help with the transition to my realm if Emrys had seen more than a pigsty in this one.”

“Arranged? Then you didn’t visit him.” It wasn’t a question. The Pritkin of this time period and I had had a conversation about his childhood recently, and he’d never once mentioned his father.

He’d never mentioned him.

“It seemed the best way,” Rosier repeated.

“Why?” I could feel my face flushing. “Because if he didn’t get your abilities, he’d be useless to you? And you’d abandon him, like all those fey fathers did their unwanted children—”

“Don’t be absurd! I would have provided for him—”

“Physically. But he would never have known who he was, what he was—”